For Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Ileana Cabra — known by her stage name, iLe — music has always been a way to reflect and comment on the world around her. iLe began her musical career singing with her brothers in their renowned rap group Calle 13. But in 2016, iLe decided to go solo. She would go on to release three studio albums, using those platforms to explore many musical genres with deep roots in Latin America and the Caribbean: from boleros and salsa, to pop and reggaeton. As a songwrite...
Jan 03, 2025•20 min
On May 3, 2017, a young woman was found dead on the campus of a prestigious university in Mexico City. Soon after the Mexico City Attorney General's office sent out a series of tweets—that would be picked up by the Mexican media—that characterized the 22-year-old as a dropout and alcoholic. The response online was immediate: many women saw these tweets and media reports as an attempt to discredit the woman as a victim and in response, thousands of women started to tweet with the hashtag #SiMeMat...
Dec 29, 2024•30 min
Filmed over six years, "The Silence of Others" reveals how survivors and their families have struggled to cope in the aftermath of Spain’s 40-year dictatorship under General Franco. The film, executive produced by Pedro Almodóvar, follows the victims as they organize a groundbreaking international lawsuit and fight a “pact of forgetting” around the crimes they suffered. Survivors of the dictatorship and human rights lawyers built a case in Argentina that Spanish courts refuse to hear. Maria Hino...
Dec 27, 2024•24 min
The Yakama Indian Reservation in Eastern Washington is home to 11,000 Native Americans and almost three times as many Latinos. Over recent decades, the reservation has attracted Mexican farmworkers and their families who made the valley their home. Despite shared indigenous roots, living side by side hasn't been easy, and tensions between the two groups are high. On this collaboration with Northwest Public Radio, Latino USA dives into the dynamics of the reservation, exploring how two communitie...
Dec 22, 2024•51 min
Javier Zamora was nine years-old when he made the journey from El Salvador to the U.S.-Mexico border. Last year, nearly 20 years later, he returned to the country where he was born, to apply for a visa that will allow him to continue to live in the U.S. In this award-winning episode from our vault, we follow Javier's return in his own words: through audio diaries, archival family tape, and interviews. "The Return" is an intimate portrait of what gets left behind when we immigrate and what we can...
Dec 20, 2024•34 min
Natasha S. Alford has always been three things: Black, Latina and an overachiever. Weeks after a historic presidential election, Maria Hinojosa and Natasha —a political analyst, journalist, and media executive— sit down to talk about solidarity between Black and Latinx communities and Natasha’s latest achievement, her debut memoir American Negra . Follow us on TikTok and YouTube . Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage ....
Dec 15, 2024•37 min
This week Latino USA brings you an episode of the In The Thick podcast. ITT hosts Maria Hinojosa and Paola Ramos are joined by NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff for a deep dive into the devastating consequences of Donald Trump’s first term immigration policy. They discuss the upcoming film “Separated,” based on Soboroff’s 2020 book by the same name, Trump’s child separation policy, and what a repeat of one of the darkest chapters in U.S. immigration history could look like. Follow us on TikT...
Dec 13, 2024•31 min
The “virtual wall” across the U.S.-Mexico border is made up of things like drones, sensors, cameras and… surveillance towers. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported border technology through the years, but advocates and researchers argue that a virtual wall can be as controversial, and deadly, as a physical wall. On this episode, producer Reynaldo Leaños Jr. travels to southern Arizona where one of the first major concentrations of surveillance towers on the southern border were built, an...
Dec 08, 2024•55 min
This week Latino USA brings you an episode of the The Burden: Avengers podcast. Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At age 19, she was kidnapped for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from cargo planes into the ocean. Miriam survived. Then as a journalist, she waged a campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is a podcast series produced by Orbit Media that tells the story o...
Dec 06, 2024•32 min
Felipe Coronel, aka Immortal Technique, is a legendary underground hip-hop artist known for his skills on the mic and his raw, highly political lyrics. The Peruvian-American rapper became well-known for his first album in 2001, "Revolutionary Vol. 1" and particularly for his infamously brutal song "Dance With the Devil." Tech says growing up in Harlem during the 80's and 90's caused him to harbor a lot of rage—much of his music discusses colonialism, poverty, and corruption. We sit down with Imm...
Dec 01, 2024•23 min
In 2001, Nickelodeon started airing "Taina," a show about a Latina teen who attends a performing arts high school in NYC and daydreams of being a star. While the show only lasted two seasons, "Taina" is seared into the memories of many who grew up watching it, because at the time it was rare to see an authentic portrayal of what it was like to be a Nuyorican teen in the early 2000s. In this episode from our vault, Maria Hinojosa talks to the show’s award-winning creator Maria Perez-Brown, who is...
Nov 29, 2024•20 min
With DACA and the Dreamers poised to be back in the center of the national conversation, Latino USA revisits this episode about what it means to be young and undocumented in the United States today. In 2013, a group of young undocumented activists known as the Dream 9 staged one of the riskiest protests in the history of the immigration rights movement. They willingly left the U.S. to Mexico, and then demanded to be let back into the country despite lacking legal status. Their efforts landed the...
Nov 24, 2024•50 min
This week Latino USA brings you an episode of Future Hindsight. Host Mila Atmos is joined by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the Policy Director at the American Immigration Council, a non-profit organization that strives to strengthen the United States by shaping immigration policies and practices. They discuss how out-of-date immigration laws are and why the only cure is comprehensive immigration reform from Congress. U.S. immigration laws have not changed since the 1990s. The current border enforcemen...
Nov 22, 2024•44 min
Maria Hinojosa sits down with award-winning Mexican actors Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal to talk about their latest projects together—"La Máquina", Hulu’s first original Spanish language series and "State of Silence," a Netflix documentary about the threats and dangers Mexican journalists face while reporting in their country. Diego and Gael also discuss how they foster their lifelong friendship, and how the two create politically powerful art. Follow us on TikTok and YouTube . Subscribe to ...
Nov 17, 2024•39 min
When Paloma, a second-generation Mexican-American trans woman, was attending Maria Hinojosa’s class at Barnard College, she was using they/them pronouns. Back then, she was downcast and barely spoke a word. Years later, Maria started seeing Paloma’s social media posts as a fabulous and outgoing drag performer. How did that happen? In this episode, we follow Paloma in her journey to womanhood—a journey that started in her family home in the Bay Area and continues today, after months of Hormone Re...
Nov 15, 2024•25 min
A week after the re-election of Donald Trump, Maria Hinojosa is joined by ITT all-stars Imara Jones, journalist and founder of Translash Media, and Karen Attiah, Washington Post Opinion columnist. They dive into the far-reaching implications of Trump’s victory for our communities and what it means for the future of American democracy. Follow us on TikTok and YouTube . Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage ....
Nov 14, 2024•32 min
This week, Latino USA brings you the first episode of The Tenant Association, produced by Los Angeles Public Press. The series follows a group of tenants who came together and fought back against their landlord. It’s a story about neighbors—elderly, young, immigrant, working class renters. Many of them are Latine and Asian and had lived for decades in an apartment complex in LA’s Chinatown. Until they got a rent increase that was basically an eviction notice… and decided to fight to stay in thei...
Nov 12, 2024•25 min
To cap off our 2024 election coverage, The Latino Factor: How We Vote, Latino USA teamed up with Futuro Media’s political podcast In The Thick to bring you a special episode. In the election that many Americans said was “the most important of their lifetimes,” Maria Hinojosa spends the day speaking to voters, students, journalists and movement leaders across the country. Later Maria is joined by journalists Paola Ramos, Jean Guerrero and Jamil Smith to unpack why Trump won the elections—includin...
Nov 08, 2024•50 min
Since 1986, there has been an enduring 26-point gap in youth voter turnout in presidential elections. And as the Latine population continues to grow in the US, they are making up a large portion of new young eligible voters. So, in this election, both parties aggressively courted young Latinos for their votes. We follow two young Latinos who have been hand-picked by the parties to get out the youth vote, on the ground– in battleground states and all over social media. This story is part of our s...
Nov 03, 2024•36 min
In The Thick hosts Maria Hinojosa and Paola Ramos are joined by LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, and Frankie Miranda, president and CEO of the Hispanic Federation to discuss voter suppression in Black and Latino communities. They break down the legal, social and political methods being used by the far-right and reveal how these misunderstood voting blocs could decide the outcome of the 2024 election. Follow us on TikTok and YouTube . Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the t...
Nov 01, 2024•30 min
The 2024 presidential election has seen a rise in Spanish-language misinformation and in the content creators making a living by pushing out false content. For months, Futuro Investigates in collaboration with Latino USA, tracked how lies and conspiracies about the election and the candidates that originated in English soon found their way to Spanish-speaking audiences, amid the expanded monetization of tech platforms and the rise of technologies like AI. We meet face to face with social media i...
Oct 27, 2024•55 min
This week Latino USA shares an episode of The In Thick podcast. Maria is joined by co-host Paola Ramos, author of “Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America,” to examine the growing support for extremism in America and why Latinos can be especially susceptible to far-right ideologies. Follow us on TikTok and YouTube . Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage ....
Oct 25, 2024•33 min
This week, Latino USA shares the conclusion of Futuro Investigates podcast series USA v. García Luna . The day finally arrived. Genaro García Luna, one of Mexico’s former most powerful government officials, has been sentenced to serve more than 38 years in prison by a court in New York. In the last episode of our series, Maria Hinojosa and Peniley Ramírez tell us what happened inside the courthouse and also reveal to us that this isn’t the end of the judicial problems for García Luna in the Unit...
Oct 24, 2024•23 min
Ever since he can remember, music has been part of Paquito D’Rivera’s life. The 76-year old jazz pioneer has played on stages across the world and is still winning awards across genres. In 2023, he received Latin Grammys for Best Latin Jazz Album and Best Contemporary Classical Composition. In this conversation with Maria Hinojosa, Paquito talks about the places music has taken him, the people he’s met along the way, and the ways he’s improvising his way into the next chapter of his life. Follow...
Oct 20, 2024•35 min
Argentinian composer and guitarist Jacinta Clusellas didn’t expect that she would end up writing musicals when she moved to the United States to study music. Jacinta is part of the all-female creative team behind “Azul,” a bilingual musical in which the characters sing both in English and Spanish. In this episode of Latino USA, Jacinta tells us about the creative process and the inspiration behind this musical, and her personal connection to it. Follow us on TikTok and YouTube . Subscribe to our...
Oct 18, 2024•22 min
In the U.S., Columbus Day is a federal holiday in honor of the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus—and it’s a day of Italian-American celebration. But not everyone is on board with celebrating Columbus. His colonization led to the bloodshed of Indigenous people and while he did arrive to the Americas, he never set foot in North America. Over the past few decades, there has been a growing movement to officially replace the holiday with a day of recognition for Indigenous people. Latino USA exp...
Oct 13, 2024•28 min
Being a new parent comes with a series of challenges—one being the decision whether or not to teach your child a second language. Latino USA explores the world of bilingual parenting through the story of two Dominican-American siblings growing up in the South, one who was drawn to Spanish and the other who never wanted to speak it. Both of the siblings are now parents and faced with the question: to teach your kids Spanish or not to teach your kids Spanish? Follow us on TikTok and YouTube . Subs...
Oct 11, 2024•27 min
After Elián’s rescue he was released to relatives in Miami. Just a day later the Cuban government sent a note: the boy’s father and Fidel Castro wanted Elián back. Tensions between the two countries had long been high, and relations were about to be tested to the extreme as the Thanksgiving miracle became an international custody battle. Just over a week after his rescue, on Dec. 6, 1999, Elián turned six years old. That same day Fidel Castro sent an ultimatum to the U.S. to return the boy to hi...
Oct 06, 2024•31 min
It was Thanksgiving of 1999 when two Florida fishermen rescued a little boy from the sea. His name was Elián González—a Cuban 5-year-old who had survived a journey across the ocean. His mother and others drowned. His survival made global headlines, and soon Elián would be put in the middle of a dramatic battle for his custody between members of his family and two nations: Cuba and the United States. “ Chess Piece: The Elián González Story ” is a new podcast from Futuro Studios and iHeartMedia’s ...
Oct 04, 2024•40 min
In 1945, 20-year-old Anthony Acevedo was held in captivity with other American soldiers inside a Nazi concentration camp called Berga. There, the soldiers were used as slave laborers, building tunnels for underground fuel factories. It was during this time that the Mexican-American medic kept a secret diary and documented the horrors he witnessed inside the camp. Acevedo held on to his war diary until 2010, when he donated it to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, ...
Sep 29, 2024•28 min
